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Light trapping in solar cells using resonant nanostructures
Spinelli, P.
Publication date
2013
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Spinelli, P. (2013). Light trapping in solar cells using resonant nanostructures.
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Acknowledgements
Many people helped me with the realization of the work presented in this thesis. First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor Albert Polman. Albert, hartelijk bedankt voor jouw hulp en begeleiding. It was really a great pleasure for me to work in your group. I learned a lot from you, both scientifically and from a personal point of view. Your enthusiasm and your always constructive criticism, were very important for the success of this work. Thank you also for always encour-aging me to present our work at so many conferences.
This thesis is the result of lots of discussions, ideas, comments and feedback received from the Photonic Materials PV team: Maarten Hebbink, René de Waele, Claire van Lare, Jorik van de Groep, Vivian Ferry, Hugo Doeleman, Bonna Newman, and Lourens van Dijk. Maarten and René, thank you for helping me to get started with the FDTD simulation world. Claire and Jorik, you have been the “hard-core” of the PV team in these four years. It has been absolutely great to work with you. Claire, thank you for teaching me the nanoimprint lithography and for all the nice time we had at the conferences. Jorik, thank you for your help in the optics lab and for your always-sharp questions that have constantly been a “reality check” for my results. Vivian, Hugo, Bonna and Lourens, our collaboration has been short but intense. We had lots of interesting discussions and shared many ideas on PV. Thank you very much and I hope to be in touch with you in future.
I owe a big thank you to Marc Verschuuren. The experimental part of this thesis could not be possible without your help. Thank you for the several collaborations and for being a constant source of advice for everything related to nanofabrication. I would like to thank all the group members of the Photonic Materials group I had the pleasure to work with during these four years. Ewold Verhagen, Robb Walters, James Parsons, Ernst Jan Vesseur, Toon Coenen, Rutger Thijssen, Ruben Maas, Bas Zegers, MarieAnne van de Haar, and Benjamin Brenny, I have learned a lot from all of you during our weekly group meetings. Toon, MarieAnne and Jorik, it was a lot of fun to be in the office with you, and very productive as well, despite the constant chatting!
Being a PhD at Amolf gives you the possibility to interact with many people in the Nanophotonics department. I would like to thank them all for the useful
Acknowledgements
cussions, for the fair and direct feedback received in the Nanophotonics Colloquia and poster sessions, and for the enjoyable activities outside the working hours.
At the beginning of my PhD, there were not so many people involved in solar cell research at Amolf. Luckily for me, this number has significantly grown during this four year and I have been able to learn a lot on PV from all these people. I would like to thank the people involved in the Nano-Photovoltaics program: Jaime Gomez-Rivas, Silke Diedenhofen, Grzegorz Grzela, Mischa Bonn, Enrique Canovas, Søren Jensen. Grzegorz, thank you very much for your help with the optical mea-surements in Eindhoven. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Nanoscale Solar Cells group: Erik, Sander, Sebastian, Beniamino, and Cristina for the enjoyable and interesting discussions.
One of the great aspects of doing research at Amolf is that you have chance to collaborate with many people all over the world. First, I would like to thank Harry Atwater for having invited and hosted me at Caltech for almost 6 months. It was a great experience for me, and I learned on-the-job how challenging making a solar cell can be! Thank you Dennis Callahan and Ragip Pala for working together on GaAs solar cells and for the interesting discussions we had in the coffee breaks.
My first and most long-lived collaboration has been with ECN. I would like to thank Frank Lenzmann and Lachlan Black for providing me with silicon solar cells on which I could test my nanostructures. I enjoyed not only our scientific discussions but also the chats on socio-economic aspects of PV. Furthermore, I had an extremely enjoyable and efficient collaboration with Bart Macco and Erwin Kessels from the TUE. It was amazing to see our collaboration leading to a nice publication in only a few weeks! Finally, I would like to thank Chaz Teplin from NREL for the very recent collaboration on light trapping in thin Si cells.
Most of the nanofabrication work presented in this thesis was carried in the Amsterdam Nanocenter at Amolf. I owe big thanks to all the technicians who keep it running smoothly: Hans Zeijlemaker, Gijs Vollenbroek, Chris Rétif, Dimitry Lamers, and Andries Lof. Thank you also for your help and training. In a similar way, the simulation part of this thesis could not be possible without the support of the Amolf ICT department. In particular, I would like to thank Wiebe de Boer, Jan van Elst and Carl Schulz for my endless requests of help with setting up the FDTD licenses. Thank you also John Donners from SARA for the support with the Lisa supercomputer facilities.
Life in Amsterdam was not only work, fortunately! Thank you Marco Baggio for the uncounted espressi we had together in the weekends. It was great to have a chat with you, even if it was often on Italian politics. Thank you also to Nastia, Adrien, Ivan, Francesca, Elena, Vito, Marco, Alessandro, and Angela for visiting me in Amsterdam, hosting me and travelling with me all over Europe (and China). My biggest thank you goes to Beata who has always supported me, cheered for me, and who is my best travel mate. Dziekuje bardzo kochanie.
Per finire, ultimi ma non per questo meno importanti, vorrei ringraziare i miei genitori e le mie sorelle per il supporto e la fiducia che mi hanno sempre dato. Dedico a voi questa tesi.
